T. B. Hyslop

Dr Theophilus Bulkeley Hyslop FRSE MRCPE (1865-1933) was a British physician specialising in mental health and overseeing, in various medical capacities, the notorious Bethlem Royal Hospital in London (commonly known as, and giving its name to Bedlam) from 1888 to 1911. He was a strong exponent of eugenics. He was also interested in the use of hypnotism in treating mental illness.

When Theo was two his father, William Hyslop, purchased Stretton House, an asylum for men in Church Stretton.

Hyslop underwent medical training graduating from Edinburgh University MB CM in 1886 before gaining his doctorate (MD).

In 1888 he joined the Bethlem Royal Hospital, a large asylum in London. He retired in 1911. He also lectured in Psychological Medicine at St Marys Hospital in London and at the School of Medicine for Women. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1908. His proposers were Sir Arthur Mitchell, James Crichton-Browne, Sir German Sims Woodhead and Sir Thomas Clouston.

Hyslop was famously critical of the art of his contemporary, Roger Fry, stating that it stemmed from insanity. He was Chairman of the Society for the Study of Inebriety and the Chelsea Medical Society. He excelled as an after-dinner speaker and was President of the Omar Khayyam Club. He was a keen athlete (pole-jumper) and played cricket, tennis and golf. He composed music, painted (being three times exhibited at the Royal Academy) and sculpted.

He developed anxiety attacks which materialised as a tic in the face and shoulders during the Zeppelin raids on London in the First World War.

He died on 12 February 1933.

He made several contributions to Daniel Hack Tuke's Dictionary of Pyschological Medicine (1892)

• Laputa (1895)
• Mental Physiology, especially in relation to Mental Disorders (1895)
• Laputa Revisited (1905)
• Post-Illusionism and the Art of the Insane (1911)
• The Borderland: Some of the Problems of Insanity (1924)
• The Great Abnormals (1925)
• Insanity and the Law (BMJ 1926)